


perhaps you'd fall with me

by britishparty



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Multi, That's it, and half an ounce of plot if you squint, and people dealing with being in love, this is literally just fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-28 16:49:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8454178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/britishparty/pseuds/britishparty
Summary: Your name is Jane Crocker.Surely you must be a witch, because with the taste of pumpkin pie and your silver words, you've coaxed all of your friends into falling in love with each other.





	

**> Be Dirk.**

Your name is Dirk Strider and-- well, who else would you be? It’s not like you can get out of your own skin.

**> Dirk: Look up at the ceiling and think.**

You think, perhaps, that you’ve been poisoned.

That’s the best explanation for this thing, at least. Someone slipped poison into that first slice of pumpkin pie and it took up shelter in your bloodstream, refusing to be chased out.

(It wouldn’t be the first toxic thing in your blood. You have plenty of experience with poison, having been made up of it for so long. Your friends are helping you siphon it away slowly, but sometimes you feel like they’ll never get rid of it, as if your heart’s forgotten how to pump blood and instead circulates the same toxins, over and over.)

But this is a different kind of poison, warm and soft instead of burning cold into your veins like you’re used to. Perhaps this is a second stage of your intoxication; this is surely what it feels like to die of cold, soothing and blissful just before you slip away.

“Dirky,” comes the soft voice beside you, “stop thinking.”

You roll onto your side, refocusing your eyes in the darkness.

Roxy is looking at you, soft pink eyes gleaming like a cat’s in the dark of your bedroom. An arm is tucked over her side-- Jane’s, you think.

At the sight of her, soft and sleepy, and the scent of her breath on your face (she smells like sugar and chocolate, like Jane’s favorite baking treats, not like alcohol) that poisoned thing in you rises up and bites down into your will with teeth like fangs.

“Sorry,” you mumble. Your voice comes out gentler than you wanted it to, filled almost to the brim with affection.

“Don’t be,” Roxy says soothingly. If your voice brims with affection, hers overflows. It drips down the edge, honey and molasses and pulls you in close.

There are arms around you, too; Jake’s, you’re fairly sure, and one of Roxy’s arms. It makes you almost sad that you can’t reach Jane on Roxy’s other side.

(You blame Jane most for this poison. It was all her idea, pumpkin pie and coaxing tone and one big bed to share.)

“I can hear both of you, you know,” Jane chimes in quietly. She sits up slightly, resting half on-top of Roxy, her glasses left sitting on the bedside table and blue eyes soft with sleep.

(And with affection. You refuse to admit that, though, refuse to admit that this woman who fed you poisoned treats could possibly  _ love _ you.)

“Did we wake you up, love?” Roxy asks her, tilting her head to press a feather-light kiss to the corner of Jane’s mouth.

Jane’s cheeks crinkle upwards in a smile. Making her do that is a trick that Roxy knows well; you remind yourself that soon you must ask how, because it’s a trick worth learning.

“Don’t you always?” Jane replies. She sighs, though, and looks back to you. “Are you alright, Dirk?”

“Of course,” you tell her.

How could you ever tell her of her unwitting betrayal, of the poison she must have fed you? Roxy and Jake ate the same food, too, and they’re drowsy with happiness now. Jane must not have noticed how it fed into your bloodstream with all the other chemicals your heart pumps out, how it never left.

She pushes up against Roxy, nudging her more into your space. The thing in your blood hums agreeably, pulsing with warmth and contentment before you can fight it off. Jane’s arm reaches around Roxy and overlaps you too, pulling you into their snug-fest. Your blood practically purrs, urging you until you lift your free arm and reach over them too.

Jake, at your back, seems to dislike being left out of this arrangement.

“Give a chap some warning, won’t you?” he grumbles, scooting closer until you feel his chest pressing against your back, herding you into the center of the pile you all seem to be building.

“Jake, honey, spare some of your fine muscley arms for a poor woman crushed into Dirk’s bony elbows,” Roxy says, and she’s so close you feel her breath puff over your nose.

The arm around your waist rises up, snakes over to rest on the top of her leg.

You have never felt so warm before, wrapped in all of their arms as if that is the only place you could be.

(There is a snake that has taken up residence in your heart, you’re sure of it. It bites you, sometimes; its toxins give you this warm feeling, and its fangs must be the reason your heart threatens to burst in your chest. Jane feeds it, with sugar and sweets-- surely she put it there, hid it somehow in that pie you ate while she suggested that all four of you could be in love together and be happy.)

“Dirk,” Roxy breathes onto your nose, making your eyelashes flutter with the movement of the air, “go to sleep.”

“I can hear you thinking, pet,” Jake murmurs into your hair, where you can feel his smile against the back of your head.

“We’re not going anywhere,” Jane adds. Her hand tightens where it rests on your upper arm, and you see the puff of her hair and one eye, squinted in her smile.

Isn’t there a trope, somewhere that snakes have forked tongues, and so the trait passed to devils? You’re sure you’ve heard that countless times, but for the life of you, you can’t recall why their tongues only split in two.

Your snake, this one around your heart-- it’s got three forks in its tongue, all with their own brand of poison, and you love each of them.

(Privately, you know you’re an addict. Perhaps these chemicals are coming from your own heart, pumped directly into your blood, but it doesn’t make any difference. All it takes is one hit and you’re drowsy with bliss, warm and lulled to sleep in an instant.)

**> Be Roxy.**

Your name is Roxy Lalonde and you are a  _ babe, _ even half-asleep in baggy pajamas and smothered in warm limbs. Especially smothered in warm limbs.

**> Roxy: Enjoy the feeling of being an ** ~~adick~~ **addict.**

You can feel when Dirk’s breathing gets slower, as he drifts off. You’re so glad that you got the honor of being the one he fell asleep facing, tonight. You and he never move in your sleep, unlike Jane and Jake; you know you’ll be able to wake up and stare at him until he kicks your butt the heck outta bed.

(When you get up, you’ll have one hell of a hangover. You’ve learned from experience that you can’t get rid of this hangover like normal ones; you’ve tried taking aspirin, it doesn’t do jack. The only way you’ll ever get rid of a hangover like this is by draping yourself around Jane’s shoulders, throwing yourself in Jake’s lap, sprawling across Dirk’s work table until he pays attention to you.)

You gave up alcohol for the taste of pumpkin pie. You’ve been dry for two years now, instead getting your kicks from stealing Jake’s chair and forcing him to sit on top of you, from smudging floury handprints across Jane’s dark aprons, from re-programming Dirk’s computer to announce Shakespearean love confessions at random intervals.

You gave up late night parties for karaoke sessions, singing out-of-tune and off-key 80’s love songs with Jake; for baking, dusting countertops in flour and getting milk out of the fridge for Jane; for sending Dirk sappy poems written only in 0’s and 1’s. You swapped drowning your sorrows in alcohol for surprise therapy sessions with Rose, which gave you a way out instead of a way down.

Now, all you find at the bottom of a bottle is another ingredient to add to the shopping list, when Jane needs to bake her Christmas cake and water it with alcohol. The only thing you use a martini glass for is sitting out late at night with lemonade and a slice of lime to watch the fireflies and feel fancy. Your fridge never has more than two beers, for when Jake drags Dirk out on “adventures” and wants to up the amount of “broship” while he does it.

(When empty beer bottles sit, clean and ready to be thrown away, on the counter beside the sink, sometimes you pick them up. You sit on a kitchen stool and stare down the neck of the bottle, seeing the pattern of the tablecloth twisted and warped through the green glass. It makes you feel a little sad, knowing that there used to be times when you’d get so drunk that the pattern would untwist until it looked like normal, when all the fucked-up things that happened seemed commonplace.)

If anyone catches you staring into empty bottles, they pepper you with kisses until you’re drunk off them. They have devised a special kind of trap for you, one that’s somehow even more enrapturing than the burn of alcohol down your throat.

Jane wraps her arm tighter around you, where it’s tucked in the tiny gap of space between your hips and your rib cage; she always tells you to eat more, you’re too skinny, but you work out twice as hard because you like having that space, solely because you know people can put their arms there without getting pins and needles.

(Maybe that’s the only reason, or maybe you work out more when your old craving comes back, and when Jake finds you tucked in your corner of the local gym like you’ve been there for hours, maybe he coaxes you off the machine and takes you home before you overwork yourself. Maybe he takes you to the firing range the next day, where you can lose yourself in the kick of your gun and get a high off the way his muscles work with the recoil of his pistol, making him seem like a flawless machine once he’s got a gun in his hand.)

Jake’s aforementioned muscled arm is stretched across Dirk’s side right now, giving you a spectacular view of his bicep. You’re not exactly weak either, but looking at Jake sometimes makes you feel like a toothpick.

“Roxy,” Jane murmurs in your ear, “how about you? Are you doing okay?”

“I’m fine, darling,” you respond softly, trying your best to not breathe too hard on Dirk; he’s a light sleeper, you always worry about waking him up.

“You sure?” Jane pushes, curling in closer at your back.

You take a deep breath. 

“Yeah.”

Something in you is rapidly becoming intoxicated like this, buried in a pile of the loves of your life, and it’s hard not to mistake the feeling for falling.

(As if you could fall any farther. Alcohol brought you down one pit, and your friends hauled you out only for love to drop you down another, but this one’s nice. You’re not alone down here. But perhaps this  _ is _ like falling -- it gives you a high, an adrenaline rush, every time you look at their faces and hear their laughter.)

**> Be Jake.**

Your name is Jake English, and darn it if you aren’t tired. Much to your dismay, your bed-mates don’t seem to want to go to sleep; they like thinking about being in love. Mind you, you’re not against it either-- but you always get a thrill from loving them, like it’s a wild adventure.

**> Jake: Get a high.**

Dirk is almost inhumanly cold when you tuck yourself in closer. You know you’re ridiculously warm _ (hot, _ somebody that sounds suspiciously like Roxy pipes up in your mind) but good lord, no living person should be this cold to the touch.

Roxy’s leg is warm under your hand, so that reassures you that the room’s not cold despite the open window. You still do wish Dirk would take more care of himself, though. The lack of regard he has for his own welfare is concerning-- so concerning, really, that you don’t take him out on grand adventures anymore. Only small ones.

(You don’t take him for grand adventures anymore because  _ you _ don’t go on grand adventures anymore. Too often you are reminded of steel fists against your skin, of bruises black and blue and orange, to enjoy adventuring anymore.)

So now, you get your thrills inside your house. You get them from tripping and finding yourself falling in love, harder, faster, so swiftly you swear your heart is bruising your ribs on the inside of your chest. By golly, you thought you’d loved your blue women, but something in Roxy’s pink sugar-sweet eyes and Dirk’s pale freckled skin and Jane’s bouncing black hair has changed your mind. Nothing but  _ this _ could be love, so complete and warm that as soon as the sun touches your skin you ache for it to be their arms, warm and enveloping.

But you’ve learned, too. Your first tentative relationship with Dirk was too forceful on both your sides; you thought that it should  _ always _ be like that, warm and soft and content, but then you learned. You learned that love is not soft; it is also the wild rush of adrenaline you get when you lean out the passenger seat window in your car, and Roxy leans out the one behind you, and somewhere in the middle you decide to kiss her. It’s the bright burst of laughter when Dirk emerges from his workshop, squinting orange eyes at the early morning sun and whining, when you kiss his eyelids and push a pair of heart-shaped shades onto the bridge of his nose (and he won’t notice for  _ hours, _ until Roxy finally wakes up and howls with laughter, and he checks his reflection in the kitchen window). Love is dancing a beautiful - if lopsided - tango across the kitchen with Jane, pretending to drop her when you dip low just so you have an excuse to lean in and knock her glasses crooked. It’s running cackling across the lawn in the morning when all your loves have realized that you’ve stolen their collective pants, and Roxy is the only one brave enough to chase you in her underwear.

It’s also being the only one brave enough to go outside in  _ your _ underwear, when Roxy runs outside carrying all your pajama pants - including her own - and drops them in the dewy lawn to wrestle with you instead of handing them over.

(Love is also flinching as soon as Roxy’s metal ring touches your skin. It’s Roxy apologizing, Dirk braving the sun on bared skin to collect your pants as she brings you inside. It’s all of them sitting around you, telling you it’s okay. It’s Roxy’s apology breathed softly into your skin, and Dirk’s right beside it. It’s Jane telling you all that you’re okay.)

“Jake,” Jane whispers from across the bed, “are you awake?”

“Yeah,” you say softly. Maybe some point earlier you would’ve been silent, would’ve pretended to sleep, but there’s no point in trying to hide anything from Jane.

“I love you,” Jane tells you.

It still brings you a thrill to hear it, like you’re tipping off a cliff. Falling, falling (Jane pushed you, it’s  _ her _ fault, Roxy and Dirk have agreed it’s all her fault you’re so happily in love) and yet you wouldn’t have it any other way.

You wouldn’t change this for the world, wouldn’t swap this adrenaline rush for anything else. Not when this is such a perfect high, not when being wrapped up in human limbs is such an adventure in itself.

“Love you too, sugar,” you mumble.

**> Be Jane.**

Your name is Jane Crocker, and you think you’re the only one still awake. That  _ never _ happens.

**> Jane: Get an adrenaline rush from fighting a drunk snake. Oh, and also being poisoned.**

What?

You understand that the narrator is trying to come full circle, but--  _ really? _ You hate sound entitled, but could you get a re-do, please?

**> Give Jane a re-do.**

**> Be Jane.**

Your name is Jane Crocker. You really hope the narrator gets it right this time. 

You’re also still the only one awake. That hasn’t changed.

**> Jane: Fall in love.**

There you go.

But, really, you don’t have much falling left to do, mostly because you don’t know how much further down you can possibly go.

It was difficult to put the pieces together, in the start. Your crush on Jake-- you  _ dealt _ with it, didn’t get over it, but you continued on and fell in love with Roxy.

She was sweet, she was like the sugar you dusted over heart-shaped cookies for her. She’s still sweet, breath smelling like all the treats you force down her throat in the hopes she’ll bulk up and stop being such a little thing.

Your Valentine’s Day heart-shaped cake, of course, was for Roxy. But you’ve always enjoyed cake, and cake is never for one person. It’s for people to share.

(That was the start of your undoing. Your heart has always been too big.)

The more you saw of Roxy, the more you saw of Dirk. The more you saw of Dirk, the more you realized he was something that needed to be protected. You saw how his failure with Jake had wounded him, like an animal shying away from help, so you started soft.

You brought him cookies, biscuits, sugary sweet things. You left them wrapped in handkerchiefs, hoping somehow to preserve the warmth of them despite how long you were sure he’d leave them sitting on the side.

After that, it was meals. You timed how long he’d be working, guessed how long certain projects would take him. You’d do your utmost best to leave meals on the counter just before he finished, so he could eat some warm home-cooked dinners without having to put in the effort himself.

(You didn’t realize you were wooing him until it was too late and you’d already done it. You were never good at taking things-- once he had your heart, you never could bring yourself to ask for it back.)

Roxy teased you mercilessly over it, of course. That was how you first realized that yes, you did have a crush on Dirk. As soon as she said it and your face flamed pink, Roxy burst into laughter and told you to  _ get all up on that, gurlfriend. _ She seemed fine with it, but you weren’t so sure-- you were dating Roxy, weren’t you supposed to only love her?

But then you thought about it.

(Surely if your heart is this big, it’s okay to share?)

And thought about it.

(You never could keep your affections to yourself, you were always eager to share.)

And you brought it up with them, months and months later, after Roxy had admitted her crush on Dirk and Jake, and Jake had admitted his crush on Dirk and Roxy, and Dirk had somehow admitted to you that he was still hopelessly in love (with who, he wouldn’t say, but you knew), and you had realized that somehow all of your friends were absolutely smitten with each other.

(And maybe it  _ is _ your fault that you fell in love, because you pushed them all off the cliff until you had no choice but to follow.)

Your friends all confided their crushes to you, and you spilled their secrets like smoke from your lips, tipped over every single can of beans they’d placed within your grasp.

You made them pumpkin pie with the pumpkins from Jake’s tiny patch, to feed them as you leaned carefully against the kitchen counter and suggested, in a tiny voice too scared to admit that you  _ wanted _ this, that maybe you should all be in love together.

(And really, in the end, where were you going to go but down?)

Roxy agreed in an instant, cheeks flushed victorious pink and eyes bright like Christmas lights. Jake was second, wearing the slow smile that you learned meant he was ready for adventure, ready to tackle his future with grappling hands and steady feet.

And Dirk, shy, startled, _ (happy) _ Dirk with his mouth full of pumpkin pie, was lost the instant you leaned in and kissed him, gentle and kind like wrapped-up cookies and almost-cold bowls of noodles.

You snuggle deeper into Roxy’s side. Your heart is full to bursting with love, and you think that surely  _ this _ is where you’re meant to be.

**> Jane: Go to sleep.**


End file.
